freeboard you know splitting videos for your media projects free media done to our teeth on top. suspect. number one goal to do is show that you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy correct health risks. that are going on i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going on we go beyond identifying the truth rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america by him are you ready to join the movement then welcome to the big. ball on tell harvard in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. it didn't take wall

street's allies in the financial media along to start whining about j.p. morgan's thirteen billion dollars settlement with the federal government because that record find really as bad as the people on c.m.t. see say it was met by just a month also it's now been a one year today since superstorm sandy ravaged the east coast and many areas are story coverage but could the franken storm be just a taste of what's to come as fossil fuels heat our planet beyond recognition and the republican war on food stamps is based on one giant or why i'll tell you what that lie is in tonight's daily take. you need to know this jamie dimon and his friends in the business media are crybabies almost immediately after news broke last week that the. justice

department had reached a thirteen billion dollars settlement with diamonds bank j.p. morgan chase over its role in the two thousand and eight financial meltdown the mainstream business press started whipping it out and socialism they scream did smog just as they were targeted further in jamie diamond won't move it back in the middle ages it's wall street journal editorial page for example slammed the settlement calling it a political shakedown and wealth redistribution scheme would prove that the loved ones perp walks of not heads on spikes c. and b. c. host maria bartiromo meanwhile tried to get former congressman barney frank to say a settlement was nothing more than to be able to go lower. what is your opinion a gaping morgan having this thirteen billion dollars settlement what is your opinion is this appropriate is this a witch hunt you know now if i were you i gave you my opinion i think it's sorry for the too big to fail bank and that aside from and during and ensuring that

no head of any major bank is ever going to want to help the government in similar situations again the deal also has the worrisome aura of a populist shakedown and to quote the business media's made up its mind forget all those homeowners and investors j.p. morgan screwed over the world's biggest bank and they're the real victim here in reality however jamie dimon and his buddies are pretty much getting off without much of a scratch for more on this i'm joined now from our new york studios by an met tell you if you're going to editor for rolling stone magazine and one of the finest investigative journalists working in america today matt great to see you again. how are you doing tom i'm fine thank you so is this thirteen billion dollars settlement the largest ever paid to the federal government really is big a deal as b.c. and fox and the rest of the business media is making it out to be. no it isn't and it's also not for sure that it's going to even happen at this point. there is a lot of news coming out in the last few hours that it's falling apart all over the

place but even if it were to happen. it's not a crippling amount of money for this bank it's about wrote represents about half a year's profits for chase i would relieve them of perhaps as much as two hundred billion dollars in potential liability so that one could make the argument that they're subtle in for you know ten fifteen cents in the dollar. and chase already has they have twenty three billion dollars set aside reserves precisely for this kind of eventuality so they're essentially trying to get away with settling for half of what they've set aside. because the cash amount in this deal is really only nine billion dollars there's going to be some more mortgage relief but in terms of money they're actually going to pay out the deal as currently constituted would be nine billion dollars it's amazing now i've also seen stories that suggested are our rights j.p. morgan a write off a large chunk of this is a tax deduction and b.

that there as you know the federal deposit insurance corporation f.d.i.c in other words you and me taxpayers to cover part of the fine what's the deal. well that's a major sticking point that's one of the reasons why the deal is in jeopardy right now. chase is insisting that the f.b.i. see assume some of the liability for washington mutual a company that if you remember correctly back in two thousand and eight chase got to acquire for basically nothing one point nine billion dollars for the six largest bank in america. this was right after chase had to get a twenty five billion dollar loan from the tarp bailout so they essentially were lent the money to acquire this massive banking institution by the federal government. which in turn then took all of or most of washington mutual's toxic assets off of chase's hands through

a bit special bail out facility in the federal reserve called maiden lane so the chase basically got this gigantic bank for free. been raking in gobs and gobs of money year for year after year ever since they. acquired this bank and now they don't want to have to pay the liability that came along with this company and they're saying that the federal government should should pay for that liability and that's it's just too much to give the federal government is already assumed most of the bad criminal inventory that was on the books it was and now they want to the feds to assume the legal liability as well it's amazing how bold these guys asked in terms of what they're asking for if i'm reading this right your article on this it it seems that what chase did although chase is saying that it was really wobble and bear stearns but you know i think you're you're asking. or suggesting that it's not just entirely but basically what j.p.

morgan chase did is the pretty much the same thing that bernie made of did only instead of repping off high profile famous powerful people they ripped off average taxpayers and average homeowner is that a reasonable characterization. that essentially that's what the so prime mortgage scam really was it was just a gigantic complicated version of what bernie madoff did and that the victims tended not to be high net worth individuals that actors and hedge fund kings like there were in the bertie made of scandal they tended to be you know union members than in the netherlands or the state pension fund of missouri or investors in southeast asia. ordinary people who had mutual funds i mean these were all the people who bought mortgage backed securities essentially they thought they were buying something else and these banks created these

a labrat fictions about the quality of the mortgage backed securities that they were buying where in reality they were very very of very very poor quality they were junk rated loans. and they were being represented as aaa rated securities and they were essentially keeping the value of these mortgage backed securities stable by continually getting more and more customers it's exactly what happened as they were gone the scheme use the new investors to pay off the old investors. so they're they're taking the new money to pay the old investors and then why is it the bernie madoff is in jail and and jamie diamond basically gets his butt kissed every time he comes to washington d.c. . but again this is this is the major problem with this settlement no matter how high the dollar figure is the minute it does it doesn't matter to me you could make it twenty five billion dollars you could make it fifty billion dollars somebody has to go to jail for some of this stuff that it may not even be current employees of

chase in terms of the bear stearns and washington mutual stuff chase has its own legal legal issues even apart from the one who would bear stuff that's involved involved in the settlement remember they have their own issues with having been to trust the for bernie made off for taking care of bernie bernie madoff's money and not alerting depositors to the potential problems with made off that the bank apparently suspected there's apparently evidence that the bank had it's had serious suspicions about made off and didn't alert anybody about that there was also a serious legal problem involving the london whale episode a couple years ago where it looks like there was securities fraud on a number of different fronts by high ranking officials in the. bank and again nobody's nobody's being investigated nobody's being indicted and a lot of this stuff with apparently just go away with

a big check which is just not fair to people who are actually doing time in jail in america while the occupy wall street movement was pretty aggressive about standing outside the windows of wall street saying you know enough already and you know what splits i mean it was occupy wall street right and it was to do something about this and then i believe it was jamie diamond who made that large multimillion dollar contribution to the new york city police like benevolent fund or something the union or some and all of a sudden the police are beating up the occupy protesters and now occupy is gone and jamie is still around in those old bunch of politicians that he owns and i mean what is going to put an end to this we tried this you know action in the streets that didn't go anywhere you're talking about it in rolling stone i don't you know i don't hear you being called before congress to testify what's going to take more. i think almost everybody that i talked to agrees that the way this gets resolved to

everybody's satisfaction is they just have to they just have to enforce the law you know they have to do with george bush did after enron and adelphia and world com they have to go in and march into some of these offices and take some people out bracelets that's the only way this thing. morally gets gets gets resolved there are people who committed very serious crimes and they're not going to be punished for it and i think i think the what they're really trying to do with the government right now the department of justice are trying to find this sweet spot where they can allow all of their political allies on wall street to somehow stay in business in ovoid help being wrapped up in criminal investigations but they cannot but they can also turn around and say to the public look we did something we did something that substantial we did only this sorich and that's what this big number is all about i think you're absolutely right one final question matt what would you rather see if you had your choice the red sox win the world series on wednesday night or

jamie dimon go to jail. give me a very different i can't admit to the real answer to that question because it would totally undermine my crew bill it is a financial journalist a little bit of that can probably guess that he is that had j.v. thank you so much for being with us today. all right thanks a lot. american drone strikes have killed almost one thousand civilians just in pakistan since two thousand and four so what impact is this having on our foreign policy and what will it mean for the future of american security as congressman alan grayson the break.

well for the. science technology innovation called the least i'm elements from around russia we've got the future covered. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question for.

pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. in the best of the rest of the news during his big foreign policy speech back in

may president obama said that the it out of states does everything it can to avoid killing civilians with drones. before any strike is taken there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured the highest standard we can set the facts however appear to tell a different story the bureau for investigative journalism estimates that since two thousand and four the cia drone war in pakistan has killed somewhere between twenty five hundred and thirty six hundred people and of those killed the bureau believes that between four hundred and nine hundred forty eight were civilians and hundred sixty eight to two hundred were children yes children. it was to six only tell half the story today the relatives of one woman killed by an american drone strike in pakistan got a chance to tell their side of the story at a congressional briefing on capitol hill they spoke through a translator is her earthy or raymond the son of the victim had to say about her

death. we have one thing they do. this is. that of the. human. you know this this. and why didn't. you and you know. for more on this story i'm joined now from capitol hill by one of the organizers of these briefing florida congressman alan grayson congressman grayson it's always great to see you walking back to the show thank you first off out of the hearing that well it went very well and very touchingly we have a situation where a grandmother in her sixty's while she was tending our garden was killed by a drone attack and we had her son and her grandchildren come in and testify before us today putting a human face on the tragedy that's all too common far from being almost certain the civilians are not killed innocents are not killed in these attacks it's almost

certain that they are with the numbers running between ten and thirty percent of the total number killed. the. is this drone war helping our fight against al qaeda i mean it seems i've heard from so many people particular in that part of the world that for every person you killed a drone you create thirty forty fifty one hundred potential terrorists at least people really seriously at the united states how is this working out for us well there is substantial objective evidence that it's not working well for instance in pakistan which has that the largest number of these attacks other than afghanistan in pakistan the public opinion has completely reversed america used to be pakistan's closest friend according to the pakistanis themselves and now it's quite the opposite america has gone from the most popular country among pakistanis to in many respects the least popular country among pakistanis and that will definitely have all sorts of consequences for our own security pakistan is our regional ally

pakistan is the third largest recipient of military aid from the united states and year after year receives approximately a billion dollars in aid from the united states and by alienating the people of pakistan we are going to end up ailing to get pakistan itself and this will actually impair our ability to fight terrorism let us not forget that one of the nuclear. forces in the region to my recollection is correct. the amnesty international says that the strike may have been what's called a double tap strike you hit and then when people come in to rescue you you hit again and kill rescuers and that that is a violation of the laws of war. in your opinion or in the opinion of your committee or the evidence you're seeing does it appear that the united states is committing war crimes and if so who should be held responsible well in the past several occasions when this came up in serbia and also in west africa war crimes have

tended to be crimes where there was deliberate killing of civilians and we haven't seen any evidence of deliberate killing of civilians here this is inadvertent killing of civilians but why do you ask yourself why are we doing this when there are alternative means that come nowhere close to doing this kind of harm to innocents and inflaming the foreign public opinion for instance given the fact that we are giving a billion dollars you to pakistan when we have the pakistani army arrest the one hundred or two hundred or even five hundred militants that we believe could possibly one day pose some kind of threat to the united states. i'm curious if there might be some dimension of the perverse incentives that we see with the private prison industry at work here with the private prison industry when we privatized that part of the commons that industry then started lobbying for longer sentences for minor crimes or drug crimes things like that in order to get more business drones are

a very profitable part of the military industrial complex is there any any sort of pressure being put on the cia or is this any part of this privatized is there any dimension of that to what's going on here well quite possibly i think it's true that the drone industry is a booming business there's no question about that we're now in our second generation of these drones fortune i was able to prevent the first generation of these weaponized drones. to be deployed within the united states as there are plans to do. a pass an amendment few months ago preventing weaponized drones from being deployed within our own borders but yes the profit motive is relevant here i think what it what also is relevant is a sense of hubris i think it's crazy to think that by staring at a screen somewhere in the united states you can make intelligent and fully informed choice of choices about who should live and who should die a thousand miles away that is beyond anyone's capabilities including our own what kind of reception is this perspective of yours and your. people giving testimony

that kind of reception that they receive from your colleagues in congress well i was pleased to see that this did in fact put a human face on this particularly the testimony of the granddaughter who was as a young child and she said that she had always prayed for blue skies before the drone attacks started because they were so beautiful and now she prays for gray skies because when there's gray skies the drones are absent. that's that's amazing that's so said congressman alan grayson thank you for the great work your guns you're welcome thank you tonight just. with me for tonight's big picture politics panel matt purple system managing editor of the american spectator call williams democratic strategist attorney and rusty humphries host of the rose to help for you show it's great to see you all if you are usually on the west coast thank you it's good to be here. are you visiting or

moving i'm visiting i want to hang up my friend tom well it's great to see you thank you very much and matt welcome to the program to see this is your first time this is my second time i'm always in the hot seat i'm always right next to say also which if you want to i don't want to rock. ok let's start out talking about drones i just had this conversation with congressman alan grayson he said you know basically these are not killing of civilians with drones is not a war crime because it's inadvertent but it might be like really stupid policy my words not his but i think i'm conveying the essence of what he was suggesting and he's saying you know we're giving a billion dollars to pakistan every year can't that at least buy a few members of their military to go arrest these one hundred to five hundred people that we've identified that we think are worth killing from the air and i'm just curious everybody's thoughts i guess the first thing is i guess it's perfect that you have alan grayson talking about that because nobody's a bigger bomb thrower than alan grayson i mean i mean metaphorically have course

unfortunate could hear everything he had to see you say but this is a guy that unfortunately designed act like united states congressman if you ask me this is a guy that's out there throwing accusations equating the tea party with the k.k.k. that's not the job of a congressman so. this issue this was a very sober very thoughtful analysis i'm sure it was and there's you know it's a lot of different issues that are sober and rather than speaking of congressman grayson listen let's talk about the drone policy is is it a good policy you can call i'm not really huge proponent of the use of jones to be quite honest with you you know i guess this is just the raging liberal i mean coming out. you know with the use of drones you have the collateral day. damage that is associated with drones i feel as though it would probably be better and maybe even cheaper for the united states government to pay various individuals within pakistan within the pakistani army to go in and you know go after the

individuals that we have identified to be honest with you the son of a soldier who was killed in vietnam i certainly understand the cost of american lives do i love the idea that we're sending drones over there no but anything to make sure that another little boy doesn't go through what i had to go through i'm willing to to do that but outsource it to buy let's talk about the technology for a second which is we really have reached a point where you can kill somebody with the push of a button that's what drone technology represents and that's a power that you know really until now we haven't had in military technology it's astonishing how quickly it's evolved how you know you have local police departments asking for the now states there needs to be some oversight on this there needs to be i agree it's a wonderful thing that we don't have to send in soldiers every conflict all over the world but there does need we need to be careful about the way we're using those things because this is a power that i wouldn't trust with anybody the thing that concerns me the most are we were if we were. in a war or at war i mean arguably we're at war in afghanistan in parts of afghanistan

and if we're bringing in drones to support soldiers on the ground or to achieve a military purpose it makes perfect sense to me pakistan is our ally i mean in my mind this is like i think if americans just thought of it this way for just a second like you know mexico has this horrible problem with narco. terrorists actually i mean they go in and they'll kill all the police of a doubt you know murder half the people in the town and and so if they've got a legitimate problem with terrorism just like we do if mexico is to say one of those narco terrorists is in a house in phoenix arizona and we're going to fly a drone over phoenix or going to take out that house of a blows up a couple houses around it that's just collateral damage where you got that sucker can you imagine homeric i would respond and you're right about that but there's one . thing that you are wrong and that is that pakistan is not our ally and we should stop the obvious that this is really our ally we said we'd give them a billion dollars every year we're doing that's not right and the one thing that obama got right in the two thousand and eight campaign was he said that we needed to step up the pressure on pakistan because for some reason top al-qaeda operatives

including the top man himself osama bin laden keep materializing under their noses like keep claiming and sent away one of these over pakistan is is feeding the anti government forces in pakistan that should the at least titular really our allies who are directly our allies and increasing the probability that governs going to be overthrown by an al-qaeda type type insurgency so we don't do anything we just leave him alone and they're all either going to i think i think we said you want you want your billion dollars do something for a down a group that absolutely it seems it seems like you know just one way you're arguing with. our health our. yeah let's we just have a minute of the break and but i want to start with the obamacare thing. n.b.c. is reporting today that you know many people hundreds of thousands maybe millions of people are going to lose their health insurance policies but that a lot of these health insurance policies particularly ones that have been really aggressively sold over the last two years typically for less than one hundred

dollars apiece per month in many cases less than fifty dollars a month are the equivalent of subprime mortgages they're useless they're worthless they're exploding they're disasters they should go and and actually let me just stop there because i don't have enough time for anybody to give a response we'll pick this up more of tonight's big picture politics. wealthy british style. is not on the right. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing up for a shelter old today. we're not psyched to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced that the now turn them on their strike never turn the world's attention to the place that some.

of our time. was the new alert animation scared me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of the lawyer and a great thing that has. ended or what they found. is a story made sort of movies playing out in real life. welcome back to the big picture politics panel joining me tonight met purple nicole

williams and rusty humphries let's get back to it ok start of the set up on the obamacare thing people are losing these old exploding policies they're eligible for new policies but they're more expensive this is just like they've handed a talking point to fox news on the other hand is the time that we cleaned up this health care mess that we've got in the united states you know do something with the first of all i got a six hundred dollar increase in my health insurance. to two daughters and myself i also a guy who's wife we've talked about this before passed away and so i understand the high cost of health care. even with insurance it is outrageous do we need to fix some things one hundred percent absolutely however they went for too much too soon they weren't ready for what they're trying to accomplish and it's been a mess and we really need to just say we've got to stop and take a look again at what it is you're trying to accomplish and slow this train down

before it takes everybody off the cliff. if we do that. it collapses i mean laughs and anyway it's not collapse horseshit and there's no chance with the website there's not a cause and there is a lot more in the train that's going to have to leave the station it's going to have to leave the station at some point to keep the train in the station is not going to fix all of the problems that you just that you just stated but we're a boat the training wheels if i want to do it is ok to go anywhere but it's actually massachusetts in two thousand why mitt romney was really pleased about it it's been run just past want to and he got is but kicked out elections so you know again it's one of those things where it's it's in a situation where we are prepared it's not ready this whole we've got to pass the bill to see what's in it we now see what's in it oh my sweet jesus little or no it's bad when you and wherever the dream is whatever position the train might be end the point with these plans is that when you make it when you buy health insurance you have you make two calculations you have the amount that you're

willing to pay you know say x. versus the amount of coverage that you want to get say wa and it used to be that you could get you to the fairly large menu of options you know you could choose these plans that you're saying are exploding these are the more catastrophic plans they don't provide the maternity care they don't provide to make sure that is what is going to be catastrophic here and most of these cases million dollar caps or simply in some cases half million dollars lifetime limit stuff like this but the thing is if that's what you're willing to buy if that's what you want to buy because that's all you can afford you shouldn't be told by the government you have to shell out more money you know two x. three x. four x. for coverage that you know maybe you don't we don't know you are owners that out of the way of our car and you want to you i mean our bodies as important as our cars. you know there's a lot more services that we put into our bodies i mean this kind of like i said just because there's a certain character sense of a lot of stuff you know it covers lung cancer i don't plan on getting that but i'm glad it's there it covers leukemia by you've seen a lot died of that but i hope not too sure sure and i understand as cancer i don't have brought us some number of men actually get this because i think you're going

to get my point i mean i feel a lot to cover the whole budget playing side to die of leukemia too but my point is you can tell people that but then when their premiums go up two or three times what they were before when they're paying hundreds of dollars a month for this coverage it's an entirely different story they can't afford it they're paying for quality coverage that will cover them in the case that they get sick is the same thing of going out and buying a limb and so you're saying that we should continue to sell the limits of health care that is even want to get them from point a to point b. i don't know why they're necessarily considered lemons they're not all lemons they just uncovered services that the government wanted them to provide they weren't as extensive as the government wanted them to be the government said you have to cover them the insurers said fine and therefore we have to raise the price again it's not just these lower ones that are going to better having problems again six hundred dollars or more a month and i'm not getting any better insured six hundred dollars a month if you had a lot of money if you had no income you know what you'd be paying for that nothing . and you can the subsidy because you get a subsidy would be free in fact if your income was less than twenty thirty thousand dollars a year you lost it sounds like maybe i should just quit work and. work and i'll get

the food stamps we may talk about they have got all kinds of funny stuff although i am trying you know that the see i get all you can find some then you can you know anybody that is that let's talk about n.s.a. spying here on capitol hill today. it was interesting to see dianne feinstein do a one eighty on this but you know it's like the first the word came out that we were tapping the phones of millions of people in europe and then the word came out that we were tapping angle of merkel's private cell phone and then she got all upset about the actually the what's her name down and down in brazil that happened a couple weeks ago and then it was europe and then. and then it was like ten sixty million spaniards now they're saying oh no the spaniards actually did that they handed it off to us and and there's just this kind of schizophrenia that a clapper james clapper the director of national intelligence testified before congress today he had this to say about spying on foreign leaders. is my understanding is that plans and intentions of foreign leaders would be important

for the united states to know that's a hearty perennial was a long as i've been in the in the intelligence business. fifty years leadership intentions in whatever form most express this kind of a basic tenet of what we are to collect and analyze and why we're so that makes a certain amount of sense you want to know what even your allies are up to particularly in an unstable world is as we are again on the other hand do you really want to be tapping their privates cell phones on the third hand i guess if that's what it takes to find out you know i'm really of like seven minds about this i mean it's like i wanna spy agencies to work i want them to work well i want to be a safe and secure country and world and on the other hand i think it's obscene that all of us have had our telephone calls intercepted that i are web traffic is being monitored and not just all of us but everybody who is watching this t.v. right now there is something funny fundamentally wrong with that at sap and

obviously not just to us but to people all over the world and at what point is has it gone over the top and and personally my biggest concern is that if seventy percent of the n.s.a. budget has been privatized it's that perverse incentive that i was talking with alan grayson about with regard to the drones where you know if there's money in it all of a sudden there's an industry pushing it there a lobby is pushing it there is a comp there are companies that are running amuck i mean it is edward snowden worked for booz allen hamilton which is owned by the carlyle group which used to be owned by part of in part by the bin laden family right after nine eleven and this is like. these are the people who are spy not. wait a minute ok so first of all tom i would like to say welcome to the tea party because you want to have a smaller government less size and scope of government less government intervention fantastic i'm with you do we need to have this overreaching spine first of all real surprise that we were listening to the phone calls of the german chancellor i was

surprised when i when i read the news report and i'm assuming that this is true that the intelligence agencies were asking people like assistance to the president assistance to two people associate with the state department and things like that for the rolodexes that they had collected you know so like if you go on a trip to paris and you're meeting with the french president just like when when you come in as a guest right i get your cell phone number in case there's an emergency so i can call you if you get stuck in traffic and that and that that private those private personal numbers were being routinely handed over to intelligence that seems to me . i agree it's a government out of control. well it's a double edged sword and i kind of look at it like we want our intelligence to collect as much information as possible heaven forbid something happens and then now we're going to then say why didn't you know about this why weren't you doing your job why weren't you investigating this but then at the same time my question is well are they also watching us i'm sure they are i'm sure they're watching the

white house i'm sure they're watching president obama as well throughout the foreign govern them the other foreign government you know and so i feel as though when you're and at that level there's a certain level of privacy that you shit in a civil that's just my general feeling but there's this thing called the five eyes that the five basically english speaking countries in the world australia new zealand the united states england and what is it ireland is the fifth one of the you know there's the and the absolutely share intelligence with each other and the rest of europe has been excluded from that and that seems to me like a really odd policy. at some fundamental policy level should we be having this conversation and is it time for a new church commission you know in the seventy's after we discovered the richard nixon was literally using the cia to spy on reporters so that he could he could trash them about their sex lives if he could figure it out you know when they reported on him so you could threaten them. you know the church commission

basically took apart and put back together our intelligence agencies in a way the seem to make sense is a type of that again yes it is we need some oversight in addition to what we had because the church commission created the phase the court which was supposed to be that great you know sort of beacon of oversight of the n.s.a. you know out of thirty two thousand surveillance requests that the n.s.a. has filed with the fisc with the face of court they've rejected exactly eleven of them that's not oversight it's simply not oversight to have such a small percentage of surveillance as well you size zero or it is pointed entirely by one man john drop by one man. used to be a corporate lawyer it is and we're not you know the people aren't subject to any of . and i just think you know the secret group that was carrying out this bug on angela merkel apparently they're based in something like eighty countries a few locations around the world they're very very extensive and with the n.s.a. they keep saying all right well we're not doing this and then snowden or somebody else you know some report comes out of that yeah they move the goalposts back and they say actually you know you got to kick it through here and then edward snowden

does and they move it back again and i just think you know i was reading some hawkish columnists the other day who was saying well we need to have a balance between liberty in privacy liberty and security and that's why we have the n.s.a. that's up to us and my response is we do need a balance but it's completely shifted entirely in the direction of security we don't have privacy anymore and we need that in there needs to be some oversight here with you right now a ballot initiative is being considered in the state of washington that would require all genetically modified foods to be labeled unfortunately the same thing is happening in washington state right now is happening in california. so far. big ag companies like monsanto general mills dow chemical have spent upwards of forty six million dollars in this little state washington state i mean a little population wise for allegedly small. g.m.o. activists of only raise nine million dollars these the g.m.o. industry i mean it's you invest a few tens of millions of dollars and in lobbying basically advertising and you

make billions of dollars in profits don't americans have the right to know what's in the food were eating i mean we're not talking about government saying no you can't do it we're not talking about big government saying anything other than if you put something in the food you have to disclose that that seems like an appropriate function of government to me at all i i think they do know what's in their food because this is been looked at and materially the food that you know g.m.o. food is no different than other foods so-called natural fears no that's not true to you is come to that conclusion that there is it doesn't have any adverse effects any i am way too much of the trolls would would. they did a study on that so that wasn't true so did the w.h.y. . did the a.m.a. i mean this is been studied it's been looked if i'm eating beef i would like to know that i'm eating cloned that's just me personally and i think it's a travesty and we're not going to talk about campaign finance reform but i think this is kind of i don't know an extension of that because you allow here's

a ballot initiative and you allow basically big corporate money to come in and sway an election and that's that way the voters are going with the voters mindset but basically affect the outcome of elections because they're aware that there are just times when i don't always i don't probably the speech problem the money coming to washington states where i grew up but you think of me as a commie hippie all of a sudden i actually agree with you i think it should be labeled i think that i want to know what's in what's in my food i think we've had a problem with that for quite a while and it is causing obesity diabetes and other issues that are of concern. the cold thank you all for being with you. coming up don't tell republicans but snap the federal food stamp program might be the best economic stimulus america can ask for on display and why.

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in anytime you want. in tonight's green report a year ago today superstorm stan sandy made landfall in the united states killing an estimated one hundred sixty americans and causing billions of dollars in damage particularly in new jersey new york and connecticut to mark the one year anniversary of one of the worst storms to ever hit the united states even of concerned scientists co-hosted a conference at monmouth university in west long branch in new jersey woman is fallacies discussed what they can do to better prepare for future severe storms and flooding joining me now from our new york studios to talk more about that event and the lessons we should take away from superstorm sandy is dr any rosenberg director

of the center for science and democracy with the union of concerned scientists dr rosenberg thanks for joining us tonight. thank you very much tom tell us about the conference that you hosted today. well we brought together citizens into experts to talk about where we should go from here and we are a year after superstorm sandy recovery operations are still going on some people are still suffering from the effects of the storm and we know this will happen again so what are the paths forward for communities for the state and frankly for the nation you could extend that to the world of course we want to focus on what is the evidence and what should people know about what's coming. you're. an expert on the oceans as i recall is that right. where it were that we stand today it's i would say level rise and and what is the state of life in the oceans. well with sea level rise due to. anthropogenic climate change manmade climate

change we've seen an eight to ten inch sea level rise in the new york new jersey area it's important to understand that sea level rise won't be even all around the ocean because of lots of other factors factors including geography. we expect that there will be an accelerated sea level rise by up to three to five feet by the end of the century now in terms of life in the ocean. there is lots of dimensions to that question of course as affected by climate change we know that species are moving that productivity is changing that affects the resources that we depend upon as well as things such as coral reefs arctic sea life and so on that that we consider iconic so the climate effects on the ocean really are quite profound and these are things that we now are measuring not projected back four decades ago

people were talking about producing effectively a mass extinction in the oceans as a result of overfishing now we're hearing about the possibility of something like that hitting. bottom of the food chain as the oceans acidify. your thoughts on both those topics the confluence of those topics and and where you know where we're at and where we're going. on much of my career has been working in fisheries and we actually know how to address the problems of overfishing it's not that complicated if you're over fishing you need to reduce fishing pressure the politics are very complicated but we have the basic tools over fishing is still a problem in many parts of the world we've made some really good steps in the united states and certainly in other places to address the problems of overfishing and recover stocks but now what we're seeing is the background environment is changing again due to climate change manmade climate change and that means that.

the actual productivity of the resources is changing and adjusting for that productivity and keeping our management on track to end the impacts of overfishing is really a big challenge now in addition. in addition to that we know that ocean acidification is occurring you referred to it in your remarks that's because there's more c o two in the atmosphere that results in acidification of the ocean from an actual drop in ph if you like and some animals many which need to take calcium out of the water for their shells or their skeletons will struggle as that ph drops and that is is what you're referring to when you say were threatening the base of the food well it's already apparent in for example aquaculture operations on the west coast where farmers and clam farmers are finding more and more difficulty in actually timing when they can set if you like the young oysters so that they can grow because of

acid events that are coming in because of the slower ph so there really is a whole complex of effects that's affecting the productivity. and where are we added in the process of. tipping points or. points where we've done the kind of damage that we just can't back away. well i don't think that we either know exactly where the tipping points are or that we are necessarily approaching those tipping points except in a few cases we should start to be trying to understand with some persuasion where those tipping points are certainly for special habitats like coral reefs or in the arctic or at the poles where the effects of climate change are the most was severe then we really need to to look at the very carefully it when shallow water coral reefs at least can no longer stay in themselves that's due to not only acidification but also warming and and

a range of other factors including overfishing in the arctic a different problem much more open water and in fact today. admiral thad allen who used to be the commandant of the coast guard and. you know has been involved in katrina and gulf oil spill and many other events he said that sometimes you know he would go to congress and people would be arguing over whether climate change was occurring and as commandant of the coast guard he would say well lose a lot more open water in the arctic in places i never saw it before that's what i have to deal with i don't need to deal with this argument i need to do my job based on what i'm seeing on the water so it's important for people realize we're actually seeing the effects just as we saw this gigantic storm that hit new york new jersey connecticut area a year ago part of that is big is because of sea level rise the storm surge that's exacerbated by sea level rise the greater intensity of storms that can be caused by a warming ocean so all of those things are now observed effects in the ocean of

climate change what should we be doing and what kind of timeline should we be doing about. well the timeline is we should be doing everything as rapidly as poss. but obviously we need to think through what the options are for the kinds of. coastal storm advance or natural hazard of events and we shouldn't just say coastal because of course there's also drought there's severe storms in other parts of the country wildflowers and the like we need to actually be thinking through how do we prepare and how do we best use the natural systems that exist and protect them so that they can help protect us we need to plan much better for our not only coastal communities but urban communities that are affected by these these same impacts whether it be a flood from major rain events or it be a storm coming ashore and we have to remember it's not just the beach that was impacted it also was urban centers all along the coast including of course new york

city and that planning means in some cases we have to adjust to the way that we build some places we should no longer be building and we have to pay particular attention to those communities that are most vulnerable because that they have the least least capability to respond and and that's a big challenge and one of our speakers today i think made a really important point we don't want to just rebuild and get back to where we were because for many vulnerable communities that's not nearly good enough we should use the opportunity to do things better to to address equity issues as well as try to make sure that we can respond more effectively to the ongoing effects of climate change these storms will happen again that's not my position it's the position of two former governors one republican one democrat admiral allen and everybody at the conference dr andy rosenberg thanks so much for being with us. thank you very much tom.

the republican war on food stamps is based on one giant lie. last month republicans in the house approved a bill that cut a staggering thirty nine billion dollars from the supplemental intrusion assistance program snap otherwise known as food stamps over the next decade president obama has said that he will veto that house bill should reach his desk but the damage is still going to be done and that's because this friday november first the snap program will be slashed by five billion dollars anyway thanks to the expiration of the two thousand i'm recovery act but increased funding to that program as any republican on capitol hill about these cuts and they'll tell you that there are

lousy in the billions we spend every year on the snap program feeding people are a waste of the program is hurting our economy it's government's money no know you. and the republican story couldn't be any further from the truth the thirteen point six percent boost in food stamp aid in the two thousand and nine recovery act helped to lift more than half a million americans out of food insecurity fancy phrase for hunger and millions more out of poverty food stamps lifted four point seven million americans out of poverty in two thousand and eleven alone and when americans are lifted out of poverty our entire economy benefits because those americans are consumers as christopher cook over at mother jones brilliantly points out extensive research shows food stamps are a highly effective investment delivered big returns for all americans not just the poor snap not only provides an economic and attritional lifeline for low income americans it also creates

a significant boon to the wider economy in other words the billions of dollars the government spends each year on food stamps are being reinvested in the economy and acting as a giant stimulus according to the department of agriculture center on budget and policy priorities for every five dollars spent on food stamps up to nine dollars is generated in economic activity and the food stamp program is putting thousands of americans to work to for over a billion dollars in retail food demand from americans in the stamp program thirty three hundred thirty farm jobs are created across america even george w. bush could understand the economic benefits and the powerful stimulus effects of food stamps in an attempt to help bring america out of the post nine eleven recession the bush administration doubled snap funding between two thousand and two thousand and eight from twenty to forty billion dollars in today's dollars it's fact checked out or points out fourteen point seven million americans were added to the food stamp rolls by bush that's fourteen point seven million americans who are

able to use the assistance they receive from the government and reinvest that money in the american economy but the issue goes deeper than just the economics of food stamps it really. goes to the heart of american values do we the richest country on earth really want to be the place where people go hungry when capitalism hits its periodic speed bumps back on january eleventh one hundred forty four his state of the union address franklin delano roosevelt proposed his economic bill of rights often referred to as the second bill of rights it was in that second bill of rights speech that f.d.r. said that every american should have the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation whether republicans like it or not access to food should not be should be a right in this country not a privilege the free market fails to provide food for the people and it's the responsibility of government to step in and provide given the massive economic benefits the food stamps gives us let's make

a more perfect union by preserving the spite a lifeline for millions of americans is not just good economics it's also the right thing to do. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday october twenty ninth two thousand and thirteen and don't forget democracy begins with you get over to last hours dot org and check it out pass it along tag your it. on your. face i think you know. pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure.

wealthy british style it's time to. go. market. candles find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report. more news today. again flared up. these are the images provocative and on the streets and canada. giant corporations are all today.

on larry king now science's reigning superstar neil de grasse tyson why why am i interested in space because i think it's fascinating it's awesome it's limitless it's boundless and if it holds the seeds of everyone's. curiosity what percentage of knowledge as we look out in the universe and we look at all of the forces that are driving what's going on we actually can quantify how much of that we know and it's about four percent plus life elsewhere you run the numbers and you realize it would be inexcusably egocentric to suggest that we were alone in the us all next on larry king now.